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If you are an experienced developer or any individual who have access to Youtube / MOOCs and strong willpower to learn, this post is for you.

I have been working as a software developer since I graduated from college and it has been 5 years now. I did some freelancing during college days but it did not involve any serious engagements like signing the NDA or any other contract. Now that I have worked at one of the largest IT companies in India, I am looking at freelancing with quite a different perspective. It is no longer considered a hobby which helps me earn some pocket money. If done right, I can earn much more than my salary as a full-time employee. (no kidding)

I am writing this post to help us understand why freelancing is lucrative for developers and I would like to start with some simple figures. At most of the software companies, when you join as a full-time employee you agree to get paid a fixed amount every month, irrespective of the number of projects you complete. Now every resource / developer is having a billing rate that is sometimes shared with the client while estimating. If you can learn your billing rate and multiply it by the number of hours you have put in, you will realise that you have been swindled. But that is not entirely true since your employer is taking a risk for you and providing you security. Even if the project fails due to some reason, you still get your monthly salary.

Now that we have a fair idea in terms of numbers, lets dive in. If you can manage the projects on your own and have enough skills to develop a product based on client requirements, freelancing would indeed by quite lucrative. Following are a few pros and cons.

Pros:

Get paid for your work genuinely as per the market standard and your skillset.

Have complete right over your work.

No time to be spent on transport. (Some of us get hustled in the subway)

Can spend more time with family and plan trips on any day of the week.

Have liberty to make important decisions and learn from your mistakes.

Your advice and expertise is valued.

Your income is not dependent on your appraisal but only on your work.

You still get to improve interpersonal skills by communicating directly with your clients.

You earn a reputation in the market and you are an asset to your clients.

You can work on the technologies that you like.

Cons:

You have to have enough work in pipeline to earn minimum wages.

You can not afford to make too many mistakes.

You need to plan everything in advance and be ready for worst case scenarios.

Recently I found a perfect solution to having enough work in pipeline. Even though there are many freelancing portals online, they do not have the required screening system in place to make it authentic. I strongly suggest Toptal to all the potential freelancers reading this post. It has a well defined interview process which helps in ensuring that your expertise level is as per your claims. This not only helps the clients but also the freelancers, since they can now focus on the right set of clients while getting rid of the noise.

I am sure you have come across those ads which claim that you can become a billionaire while working from home using internet, well you can make it possible on your own. I hope this post has answered the question fairly.

If you are interested in mobile application development, keep reading:

I have developed enough mobile applications from scratch to have the required confidence when someone asks me if his/her new app idea can actually be developed as a product. Well there are thousands of apps in the market and mobile apps have become more important in our lives than brushing our teeth daily. If you perform a quick search online, or even attend a meet-up or social gathering, you will learn that almost everyone has got multiple ideas for developing an app. Now some of these ideas might be good while some could be trivial, but if you have the right skills to create an app, any of these apps could become successful.

I have keen interest in iOS applications and I like to follow WWDC as well as popular blogs like raywenderlich. Even the app with simplest solution can gain a lot of customers if it is intuitive and bug free. In David Murphy’s words, the future of mobile is the future of online. That is why, I have specific interest in joining the Mobile App Programmers Network.